I swear Dawn, I think the Crazy Wildlife Gods follow you around!!! I haven't seen a rabid skunk in years thank you lord!!!

I feel your pain. Only once had the lingering odor of Pepe le pew, but we are still trapping and releasing about one or two possums a week. We relocate them over a mile from our place, but I swear I'm going to start tagging them to be sure it's not the same one. I did see my first bobcat last Saturday, probably not 50 feet from me. He just looked at me until I yelled and clapped my hands loudly. And was in no hurry to leave, just leisurely strolling off. I did a quick head count and rounded our cats up inside the house.

Carol

Yesterday, I had to just wash my cat with peroxide, baking soda and Dawn to wash the skunk off of him. One night I found one drinking out of my toilet.

Carol, I think possums can roam up to 2 miles at night looking for food, so your trapped possums might be coming back.

Bobcats can be sort of bold sometimes. Usually, they will leave, but we had one on top of the chicken coop one day that would not be scared off by yelling, clapping hands, etc., so Tim shot towards it (but into the ground, as he didn't want to put a bullet hole in the wall or roof of the chicken coop) and it finally left.

Wantonamara, Oh yuck, that is such a distasteful job to have to do.

The one you found drinking in your toilet concerns me. I assume y'all figured out how it got into the house?

A local schoolteacher here woke up one night, thinking he was hearing his dog scratching at the door wanting out. He got up and stumbled sleepily towards the door and then realized it was a skunk inside his house scratching at the door trying to get out. Instead of going closer to the skunk, he went around the house opening all the other doors so the skunk could hopefully find its way out without making a big stink. Thankfully, his plan worked. After the skunk left, he quickly closed all the doors. While searching for a place where it could have gotten in, he found a hole in the floor beneath a bathroom vanity where a leak apparently had rotted the wood and caused the hole. Needless to say, that floor was quickly repaired.

One of our son's friends once found a rattlesnake in her house. I wouldn't want to find either a skunk or a venomous snake indoors. It is bad enough to run into them outdoors.

Our only wildlife trouble this past week and weekend was a coyote lurking in the woods on the north side of the house. I ran him off for two or three days in a row. Yesterday, while we were gone, he apparently came back and got a chicken because I found a spot where there were tons of loose feathers, typical of what you see when an animal grabs a chicken.

After 17 years here and tons of wildlife trouble (and lots of whining and complaining from me), I believe I've finally convinced Tim we need to put up a fence between the woods and the yard. He always has resisted fencing. After all the recent wildlife trouble, yesterday he suggested to me that this winter we ought to put up a fence "like your garden fence" between the woodland and the house. Getting him to come around to my way of thinking is nice, but he is working day and night like crazy, so I'm not sure when we'll have any time to actually put up a fence.

Dawn

I have a friend who lives in my neighborhood who had a possum show up in his kitchen. I haven't heard the story about how it got there. He didn't seem all that concerned about it, despite his MUCH WISER friends telling him to get it out of there, made noises about how he heard they were good to have around...but a couple days later he posted a pic. He had turned to leave the kitchen, heard the possum come after him, and tripped over the baby gate (or whatever he had blocking that exit). Ended up with 30 stitches in his head.

Skunks and rattlesnakes? EWWW. I think I would be heading straight for Alaska, where of course, it would be bears :)

We live with our doors open lots of the time. . And my husbands shop has 6 doors to one room. Cross vent is ideal and there is no AC in that space.

I would like to live with our doors open lots of the time, but we have too many venomous snakes. My husband does leave his shop building open a lot and then snakes and rodents get into it. I'm the opposite. I'm running around closing doors he leaves open because I don't like running into varmints inside the building. It has been rainy here the last two years with lots of river flooding near us repeatedly that has driven a lot of varmints up onto higher ground. I'm tired of them. It is almost (but not quite) enough to make me wish for a drought.

Hey, Lisa, you know we have bears in eastern and southeastern OK, don't you? Thankfully, I've never seen reports of any closer to us than maybe 3 or 4 counties to our NE. To me, that's still too close.

I wouldn't be happy to find any varmint in our house. Sometimes coons knock on our windows wanting us to feed them, so I know someone around here feeds them. We do not.

I don't really mind possums being around outside but I wouldn't want them indoors. The folks around us who have horse ranches don't tolerate possums, though, because they are the definitive carrier of a protozoa that causes a form of encephalitis in horses. I think there may have to be a secondary carrier of the protozoa so it goes from the possums (it is shed from the body in their feces) to a secondary carrier and then to the horses, but folks around here who have a lot invested in their horses try to stop it at the source by shooting every possum they see. I do think skunks are one of the secondary carriers, so that's one more reason not to want them around. Personally I like possums because they eat snakes, including venomous snakes. I'd build a little possum house for them outdoors if it wasn't for the fact that all our neighbors are horse people and wouldn't appreciate us harboring the possums.

Living surrounded by wildlife sounds glorious (and it is cool to see them living their lives all around us at times) but it isn't without risks, some more obvious and some more subtle.

Just now read this thread. Our neighbor who lives on the property behind us (or to the south of us) drove over on Thursday to let us know that there are two skunks that come out in the early morning...apparently around 5:30 just before I take the dogs outside and open the chicken door. Yikes! They seem to be living in a brush pile that's right on the line and slightly to the west of his and our properties.

Luckily my son is not required to be at school at 7 now because marching is over. We get to wake up with the sun instead of when it's still dark out.

Our buildings are raised on pilings so snakes would have a hard time getting in. We had a rattler under our porch one night a couple of weeks ago. We could not get a bead on him without endangering our plumbing so we spent a bunch of time that night doing a new folk dance called the Porch Stomp. That tired him out from rattling all night so he moved on. Occasionally we get coons or possums getting inside, trying to get the cat food. We set traps. Then they get offered to the buzzards in the front field. The skunk drinking out of the toilet was during the big drought. I found that lots of animals were attracted to us then and often they were sick.

A skunk at night is normal. That's when they forage for food and I try to just ignore them unless they are doing something stupid like trying to get into one of our buildings that houses animals, for examples. Skunks out in the daylight usually are sick, often with rabies. We shoot them and carry them (wearing leather gloves) far, far away through the woods to a clearing about 150 yards from the house so the buzzards can find them. We want to be sure the skunks are far enough away that a curious cat doesn't find them. If we see a skunk nearby when it still is dark, usually those run off when they see us. Now, if they run towards you, that's more of a problem. I've never been chased by one after dark, but I've been chased by them in broad daylight.

Our house is up on pilings for the same reason, but we still have lots of animals trying to get into it at times, particularly during drought (or flash flooding).

We have, indeed, employed a porch dance similar to your Porch Stomp in an attempt to flush out skunks, possums and coons that are trying to nest or whatever underneath the porch.

Our wildlife was oddly docile during the Big Drought (may we never have another one like that). I put waterers and feeders far, far, far from the house and fed everything willing to go there and eat/drink. Sometimes I'd see deer, coons, possums and cottontails all gathered around a waterer drinking together. We laughingly called our place the Peaceable Kingdom that year because the wild things didn't even want to fight one another for territory. They just wanted to eat, drink and leave. Well, there was one magnificent buck who brought his twin fawns to eat and he didn't want anyone too close to them. Their mother had brought them daily until one day they just didn't come. Then, the buck started bringing them so I assume the doe died, and I don't know if the buck actually was their father, but he came with them, stood some distance away and watched them eat and drink, and then left with them. That went on all summer. He did come later in winter and eat some deer corn, but he wouldn't eat until the fawns had had all they wanted. I never really thought of deer as a family unit, though of course we see them travel in herds all the time. The buck never ate or drank there that I saw in the summer months when all the animals were so desperately hungry, but he made sure the fawns did. It was kind of an awesome sight to see. In a separate area we fed the bees because all the wildflowers died and dried up by July and the bees had nothing. I'd never put out feeders specifically for the bees until that year, but it worked. They just wanted to eat and drink and leave. I'll be happy if we never ever have a year like that again. We've been wet the last two years, which just brings a whole different set of issues, but starving wildlife is not among them.

We had a run of coons attacking people in the neighborhood during the drought . I use the word neighborhood loosely since everyone is on 17- 40 acre lots, some more. I think 12 coons were downed in a 2 week period that I knew of then. Many were more than their normal viciousness. My more knowledgeable (than me) neighbor, thought it was distemper. There temper were impaired.